Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Librarian Fired For Turning In Child-Porn Viewer

Again from OneNewsNow comes a story of a librarian who was fired for calling police on a man who was repeatedly caught viewing child-porn on public library computers.
A librarian assistant at the Lindsay Library, Biesterfeld was on the job late last month when she noticed 39-year-old Donny Chrisler downloading child porn on library computers. Biesterfeld told her supervisor Judi Hill, who instructed her to issue Chrisler a warning. Instead, Biesterfeld called police the next day. A few days later, Chrisler returned and Biesterfeld noticed he was once again viewing child porn. She notified police, who came and arrested Chrisler on the spot.

According to a press release, the police also confiscated the library's computer that had used by Chrisler. Supervisor Hill confronted police, accusing them of interfering where they did not belong and assuring them that county librarians were handling the matter internally. After police explained that, since federal law had been violated, it was now a legal matter in their hands, Hill demanded to know who reported the incident. The police protected Biesterfeld's identity. However, she was fired two days later.
A search warrant turned up thousands of images of child pornography on (Donny) Chrisler's home computer. He is currently behind bars, awaiting trial.
An organization called Family Friendly Libraries has presented the single mother with the Gold Star Award, commending her "for courageously acting on her conscience" to protect children from exposure to and exploitation by child pornography. Biesterfeld was also honored during a regular meeting of the Lindsay City Council.

Crampton says the former librarian has been lauded by many groups. "Even the American Library Association concedes that, under those circumstances, it is appropriate to contact the police. So the county's kind of dancing ... between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand [they are] saying it was not wrong ... for Brenda to contact the police; and on the other that they somehow had grounds to terminate her and claim some sort of unspecified violations of policy," Crampton contends.
This is the very reason to have moral socially conscious conservative christian people at all levels of the government.

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